RECENT ACTIVITY

The school year at CenterForLit has taken flight, which means that the hustle and bustle involved in administrating the start of our Online Academy has largely receded, to be replaced by one of the most rewarding parts of my job: getting to know my students. And let me tell you, these kids are wonderful. ..

At 12-years-old, the release of Pixar’s original Incredibles hit me right between the eyes. Young enough for cartoons, yet old enough to understand some deeper implications of the story, I imagine I was at the center of their target audience. Certainly the question of Syndrome, the piece’s villain, was one I was beginning to ask myself as a budding teenager: if everyone is special, isn’t it true that no one is? How can I be uniquely valuable in a world where everyone is also uniquely valuable? It is a legitimate question, not just for children…

I’m often asked, “What does my high schooler need to read before college?,” as though there were one or two novels out of the hundreds and hundreds of spectacular works in the Western tradition without which any primary educational journey would be void of meaning. I don’t mean to ridicule the impulse to choose wisely what we offer our students. We clearly should. But I do sense an undercurrent of misunderstanding about the educational project in questions like these…

My last blog post on The Hovel is dated April 17, 2017 – over one year ago. There are plenty of reasons and justifications for my silence: I’ve been busy working on more pressing projects, Ian and I moved across the country again, we bought our first house, etc., etc. If I’m honest, though, there’s one sad underlying cause for my lack of productivity that trumps all the other excuses: I have become Hamlet…

Picture this: a young child, just beginning to develop his own taste, personality, and interests, takes up an art and begins to pursue it with all the intensity and excitement of youth. Along the way, however, he feels rejected and oppressed by his family, who vocally oppose his dreams of a grand future in which his art becomes his sole focus. “Wealth and fame might look alluring now,” they say, “but getting rich as an artist isn’t as easy as it looks, and the lifestyle holds far less actual happiness than you assume!” You know the rest, right?…